Trotz appreciates All-Star Game honor after Capitals turnaround

ARLINGTON, Va. -- The Washington Capitals have one more game to play, at the Florida Panthers on Thursday (7:30 p.m. ET; FS-F, NBCSWA, NHL.TV), before the 2018 Honda NHL All-Star Weekend in Tampa, and Barry Trotz's focus is on that.

But it's clear Trotz is looking forward to coaching the Metropolitan Division in the 2018 Honda NHL All-Star Game at Amalie Arena on Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, SN, TVA Sports). He'll join forward Alex Ovechkin and goaltender Braden Holtby in representing the Capitals.
Trotz said Wednesday that he plans to play Ovechkin and Pittsburgh Penguins center Sidney Crosby together in the 3-on-3 tournament.
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"I think that would be special for the fans," Trotz said.
It will be Trotz's third All-Star Game. The 55-year-old also coached the Metropolitan Division in 2016 in Nashville and was an assistant for the Western Conference in 2007 in Dallas when he was coaching the Nashville Predators.
Trotz said this All-Star Game will have a different meaning because of the difficult journey to get there. Unlike the past two seasons when they ran away with the Presidents' Trophy, the Capitals faced adversity at the start.
They were getting over the disappointment of losing to the Penguins in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the second season in a row and trying to figure out their identity after a roster overhaul that included the departures of Justin Williams, Marcus Johansson, Daniel Winnik, Karl Alzner, Kevin Shattenkirk and Nate Schmidt.
Trotz was also dealing with his own adversity. His contract is set to expire at the end of the season, and there were questions about his future with Washington.

"Absolutely, I had a lot of stuff to go [through]," Trotz said. "Some I can talk about, and some I can't. Probably the best way to say it is this has been almost the most difficult year I've ever coached in some ways. … I've had different teams, but in some ways it was the most difficult."
Though Trotz didn't mention his contract status, it would've been understandable if it weighed on him when the Capitals went 10-9-1 in their first 20 games. They've gone 18-6-4 since and lead the Metropolitan at 28-15-5.
General manager Brian MacLellan declined to discuss Trotz's contract during an interview with NHL.com this month, but said he was pleased with how Trotz helped the Capitals navigate the start of the season.
"He's done a good job," MacLellan said. "We were fragile coming in and it's not an easy thing to stabilize that."
Trotz gave the players time and space to deal with their issues on their own entering the season. That took some patience while Washington went through some rough patches.
"Barry's an honest guy," defenseman Matt Niskanen said. "He'll tell you if he doesn't think that you're playing up to your ability. But at the beginning of the season, it was a different dynamic and maybe he had to bite his tongue a few times and kind of let things play out, maybe let the leadership group find their way."
The turning point came after lopsided losses at Nashville on Nov. 14 (6-3) and at the Colorado Avalanche on Nov. 16 (6-2). Sensing it was time to speak up, Trotz angrily called on some of his veterans to step up in a locker room meeting following the loss at Colorado.
"I think he just had enough and told us the reality of where we were as a team, and it was something that needed to be heard through our whole group," Holtby said. "It was one of those situations where at that point in the season it could go one or two ways, and we took it upon ourselves to turn it around."
The Capitals responded by winning four of their next five (4-1-0) and eight of their next 10 (8-2-0).
"Everything to me in life, it comes to timing," Trotz said. "You've got to have some timing when things should be said and timing when they probably should be held back. People tend to think that athletes are robotic and all that. They're not. They're individuals. They're human. They have feelings. They have emotions. They have all that. And they react to all those things differently. So, you have to sometimes sit back and sort of just let it happen, and when you feel it's the right time you step in."
These are the types of lessons Trotz has learned over his 19 seasons as an NHL coach.

He ranks fifth in NHL history with 741 wins, trailing Scotty Bowman (1,244), Joel Quenneville (873), Ken Hitchcock (809) and Al Arbour (782). And he's 10 games away from becoming the fifth coach in League history with 1,500 games; he would join Bowman (2,141), Arbour (1,607), Quenneville (1,586) and Hitchcock (1,503).
But in mid-November, it was unclear which direction Trotz and the Capitals would go, and if they would be going there together. Now he has them back atop their division and is getting an unexpected trip back to the All-Star Game.
"Especially early in the year, there weren't too many experts that said we were going to be doing a whole lot this year," Trotz said. "To be going and representing not only the players but the coaching staff that all had a part in us putting a record together, it does have some meaning."